Thoughts on Writing | Author Sydney Katt

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Posted by Sydney Katt on Jul 8, 2014 in Thoughts on Writing | 4 comments

How Much Sex Is Too Much?

This might be too much

If you thought I was going to help you figure out whether you’re a sex addict in this blog post, you’ll be sad to learn that I’m not qualified to do that. Google is probably going to be your friend. Although, I am more than qualified to sing “Everything is Awesome” at you while manically dancing like a lego person, which may not actually be very useful to your needs…though it does give me an excuse to sing the damned song that’s been stuck in my head since seeing the movie over the weekend.

So, anyway. We’re talking about sex in fiction today. More specifically, we’re talking about how much sex it takes to kill a story.

But we’re not talking about erotica. I’m led to believe that there’s no such thing as too much sex in those stories. I mean, I’m under the impression that there wouldn’t be much to the stories if they didn’t have loads of sex, so…let’s just exclude that one since it’s going to throw off the curve in kind of a dramatic way.

In fact, I’m probably only going to touch on romance, romantic suspense, suspense and mystery. Why? Because that’s what I’ve been publishing for the last 17 months. We can talk about vampire/were-cat sex in the comments if you really want to, but I’m going to stick to what I know for the post, if you don’t mind.

photo by:

Posted by Sydney Katt on May 10, 2013 in Thoughts on Writing | 2 comments

R is for Regarding Reviews

There’s sort of a controversy going on in the writing world. It’s about authors responding to reviews. Personally, I think the whole thing is a little silly.

It’s definitely grown out of hand.

For those of you who don’t keep up on the world of all things indie publishing, 2012 was apparently a big year for self-published authors responding to their negative reviews on Amazon to fight with reviewers about their opinions. I think some also attacked negative reviews that people posted on their blogs. It got so bad that some of the biggest book review blogs (I’m told) won’t review anything from an indie author.

As an indie author, I guess that sort of sucks.

If I wanted people to do reviews on blogs.

Anyway, I thought I’d go ahead and share my own review response policy with y’all, in case anyone was wondering.

photo by: quinn.anya

Posted by Sydney Katt on Apr 20, 2013 in Thoughts on Writing | 2 comments

P is for Paranormal

I have a confession to make, y’all. I’m sort of a snob when it comes to paranormal fiction. I don’t try to be; I really don’t. I can’t help it. It’s just, when people get their facts wildly wrong, my head explodes.

And, sadly, it happens CONSTANTLY.

I get that writers all want to put their own spin on creatures that have been around for centuries. That’s cool. It’s just frustrating to read someone calling a particular creature a vampire when it’s very clearly a different type of creature altogether. Any level of rudimentary research would’ve helped…even a simple Google search.

But we’ll get to vampires in a later post because there’s way too much to cover today.

photo by: Anomalous Productions

Posted by Sydney Katt on Apr 19, 2013 in Thoughts on Writing | 4 comments

O is for Omigod Why Did You Kill Fortunato?

Admittedly, I’m totally cheating today because this post wouldn’t have anything to do with the letter O if I hadn’t dug deep and gone to the valley girl place with the title. I actually did have something that would’ve fit perfectly, a Latin quote, but…whatever.

I wanted an excuse to talk about Edgar Allan Poe because I’ve gotten halfway through the A-Z Challenge and haven’t mentioned him yet.

As some of you may know, I’m a huge fan of The Cask of Amontillado. It’s probably a neck and neck tie with The Raven for my favorite Poe work. But one thing has never made a whole lot of sense to me:

Why did Fortunato have to die?

photo by: FontFont

Posted by Sydney Katt on Apr 17, 2013 in Thoughts on Writing | 0 comments

M is for Murder Most Horrid

I don’t know where I got that title from. I feel like it was the title of a British TV show that was on PBS when I was a kid. Murder Most Horrid. Or maybe it was Murder Most Foul.

Whatever. We’re talking murder today.

For something that’s been around as long as there have been people on the planet, you’d think that everything had been done by now. Honestly, most things probably have, not that it stops writers from trying to invent new ways to murder people.

For fictional purposes, of course.

Regardless of whether it’s a brand new way to kill people or a tried and true method, I’m a big fan of fictional murder. If I had to pick a book I loved where no one was murdered, I’m not sure I could do it.

photo by: Justin Lowery